[78-L] fwd: Marsalis makes the world safe for pure jazz^

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Biel" <mbiel at mbiel.com>
> eugene hayhoe wrote:
>> I'd also say most 'avant-garde' musicians I'm familiar
>> with have some degree of humor in their playing as well,
>> as opposed to the sanctimonious attitude they are often
>> accused of having.   Gene
> As I've admitted, this music isn't my bag and I realize it is yours, but
> sometimes I think that the humor might be them thinking "I can't BELIEVE
> that these people are actually buying this stuff!!!!"  I've also
> discussed music styles as being like a language, that it is difficult
> for non-native speakers to hear accents.  Thus I don't think I can
> differentiate between good and bad in these styles, and I wonder if just
> ANYBODY could noodle around and play in some of these styles and be
> accepted.
>
And this succintly covers my objection to the musical (?!) style! Jazz 
originally
did away with the necessity of playing a fixed, previously-written-out 
"melody,"
leaving the rhythm as important content! This resulted in a highly-rhythmic 
form
of music, VERY danceable (and as well full of fun...!)...which turned the 
1916-
193? period into a nominal "jazz age" (although much of the music was only
nominally, if at all..."jazz?!")?!

Later versions of "jazz" gradually eliminated the necessity of adhering to 
already
extant "chord structures...leaving players free to wander off into 
new/different
sets of chords. which did NOT have to depend on either extant chords for
given songs...or on long-extant "rules" as to which chord might follow 
another
given chord! This, of course, takes some "getting used to" from listeners!

Finally, jazz players decided to dispense with any/all "rules" that in any 
way
defined what they were to play! The problem is that this "no rules" music,
being essentially "undefined from outside," is functionally identical to 
what
results when instruments are played "at random" by players who have NO
training in the playing...or the music! If one could train a bunch of 
monkeys
to "play" musical instruments (that is, to produce coherent/useful sounds
on them...!), one would get results VERY similar to this avant garde/post-
modern "jazz!" The difference, of course, is that the human players are
DELIBERATELY ignoring generally-accepted "rules"of Western music...
while the hapless monkeys not only know no better...they are probably
incapable of PERCEIVING what they are NOT doing...?!

Comment ca va?!

Steven C. Barr